The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age - Marco D’Eramo
Published in 2020 by Verso, Brooklyn, NY, and London, UK
Originally published in 2017 as Il Selfie del Mondo by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, Italy
Translated from the original Italian by Bethan Bowett-Jones and David Broder
288 pages
ISBN: 9781788731072
Growing up in a coastal tourist town, few figures earned as much derision as the typical tourist. Clad in oversized flip-flops, tacky island-themed shirts, and almost always donning a wicked red visage due to spending too much time in the sun, the tourist was always seen by us locals as a figure deserving of contempt. These external symbols of the tourist are almost inevitably accompanied by internal rage and entitlement, as they are the most likely to cut you off in traffic, yell obscenities to service workers, and just generally be a public nuisance.
However, these eye-rolling qualities of the typical tourist were often softened by their patronage and wild vacation-fueled spending habits. Despite all of the nuisances that we are forced to put up with, we were also taught to be thankful for the waves of tourists, since their presence meant that they were feeding our local economy. A vast swath of jobs in this coastal region depends on the tourism industry, as many businesses rely on the overwhelming amount of income during the summer to survive the austerity of the off-season months.
Additionally, after moving away from the coast, I attended college in a small Appalachian mountain town, which is also heavily reliant on tourism (in addition to the university). This dependence on tourism became especially apparent during the COVID pandemic in 2020 when city-dwellers from Charlotte and the surrounding areas flocked to the region. Since we were known for our extensive hiking trails and the plethora of other outdoor activities, which were encouraged in an era of social distancing, the rural mountains became overwhelmed with people, which often put an inordinate strain on local infrastructure.
For most of my life, I have been hyper-aware of the tourism industry, and the dichotomy that is often established between locals and tourists. Of course, I am not immune to the trappings of tourism. I have also traveled across the United States, the Caribbean, and Western Europe, engaging in many of the stereotypically “tourist” activities. Of course, there’s always the desire to be as least “touristy” as possible, often seeking out local establishments and trying not to stand out too much among the crowd. Yet, my very presence in these spaces implicates me as just another kind of tourist, even if only slightly more self-aware.
Of course, most people can agree that the standard tourist is annoying, even if we make an exception for ourselves when we visit other places. The discourse around tourism can often be laced with classist and snobbish overtones. We condescendingly mock the flocks of tourists who pose for selfies in front of public monuments or who record an entire concert set on their phone despite most likely never watching it afterward). Yet, even if most of us hate tourists, we cannot deny that we are often tourists ourselves at one point or another in our lives.
So why do we actively participate in an activity that, when conducted by anyone else, we almost unwaveringly loathe? In his 2021 book, The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age, Italian journalist and social theorist Marco D'Eramo offers an insightful exploration of the cultural, social, and economic phenomena surrounding modern tourism, particularly in the context of global mobility and dramatic changes in technology. Along the way, D'Eramo reflects on how tourism has evolved from a pursuit of personal discovery and cultural exchange to a mass industry driven by consumerism, spectacle, and commodification.
Overview:
In The World in a Selfie, D'Eramo offers a critical exploration of the contemporary tourist industry and its impact on both the places and people involved in tourism. The book's title alludes to the paradox of modern tourism, where the experience of a place is often reduced to a superficial image or "selfie" — a momentary, curated snapshot lacking deeper engagement with the environment or culture. By tracing a brief history of tourism, from the founding of Thomas Cook’s travel agency in the mid-19th century to the now-strange sightseeing tours of Parisian sewers, and leading up to the selfie-focused, review-riddled tourist activities of today, D’Eramo offers an incisive analysis of our contemporary obsession with tourism.
D’Eramo argues that “tourism is the most important industry of the century,” (2). not only in terms of economic power but also how it has shaped our subjectivity and our thoughts around the Other. In 2018, 8.8 billion dollars were spent in the tourism industry, which equates to “one and a half times the GDP of Japan, the third largest economy on the planet” (3). In other words, it contains 10.4 percent of the global GDP and supports roughly 10 percent of global employment. Especially in the aftermath of COVID-19, tourism has not died away as many predicted but has grown even larger, especially among high-income countries.
Yet, we rarely stop to think of our touristic activities' impacts on the planet and within ourselves. D’Eramo attributes this lack of scholarship toward tourism to the behavior of tourists and how we fail to take them seriously. We all know how some tourists can dress ridiculously, donning mountain boots and brightly colored backpacks/fanny packs in the middle of a bustling city, or brightly colored floral-print shirts while a camera hangs around their neck. The typical tourist is easy prey for derision and mockery, often the butt of jokes among locals and other tourists who believe they are somehow above the fray. Yet, even in its earliest conceptions, the snobbish contempt for tourists, D’Eramo argues, often reflects class distinctions and biases.
In the first section of the book, D'Eramo traces the historical development of tourism. He argues that the concept of the tourist is relatively new, finding its early expression in the early 19th century. The Grand Tour of the 18th century was primarily an activity reserved for the elite within society, and it aimed at self-improvement and cultural enrichment through travel. By contrast, due to technological developments and the wider availability of inexpensive modes of transportation, today's globalized mass tourism involves large-scale movements of people to destinations around the world.
In the second section, D’Eramo examines how tourism has reshaped cities, landscapes, and societies, often at the cost of local cultures and environments. He takes particular aim at UNESCO, namely how its “World Heritage” designations permanently alter the life of its recipient cities. Under the banner of preserving culture, UNESCO drains the vitality and vibrancy of historical cities, attempts to freeze them in time as static entities, and projects a constructed image onto them that can be easily consumed to feed the insatiable appetites of tourists. Thus, for example, not only does a waiter in Paris have to put on the typical performance of a waiter, but they also must take on an additional performative layer of a stereotypical Parisian that the tourist expects of them.
To illustrate this point, D’Eramo uses two case studies of the typical “tourist city”: Lijiang and Las Vegas. He argues that these cities are wholly dependent on tourism and have been constructed nearly from the ground up for this purpose. These two cities are exemplary examples of the constructed “authenticity” that accompanies the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation and how a city's economic vibrancy often depends on upholding an image of an imaginary, artificial past.
While one (Lijiang) shows signs of updating and renovation, the other (Las Vegas) is threatened by stagnation since it has little industry outside of the service sector. D’Eramo trepidaciously hypothesizes that China’s relationship with the past is markedly different from the West, as he writes “In China, the past is everywhere, in its traditions, in its etiquette, in daily conversation, in people’s behavior, in its proverbs, and in the public imagination, and yet at the same time it is nowhere, as its physical traces are nowhere visible…It seems that in China, the past is not a physical presence made of stone, bricks, and marble, but rather an immaterial presence that saturates the air they breathe” (123, 124).
These social forces, D’Eramo argues, are linked with the philosophical notions of authenticity and alienation. Tourists often look for an “authentic” experience, even when they realize that much of their experience is highly curated and artificial. This “staged authenticity” acts as a kind of Zeno’s paradox: for the tourist who wants to see “behind the stage,” by the time they get there, this too has already been staged and rendered inauthentic.
In the third section, D’Eramo takes a multi-chaptered tangent into the history of extraterrestrials within the science fiction genre and the application of Hegelian thought. He connects the modern tourism industry with the individual’s search for authenticity by contrasting oneself with an alien Other. Through these meandering asides, D’Eramo reiterates his argument that tourism is alienated because it is commodified and rendered inauthentic as soon as any attempt to pursue authenticity is made.
Finally, he also addresses the centrality of gastronomy within the tourism industry, as “food is the most tactile, most flavourful, most fragrant form in which the Other offers itself up to the tourist - it is thus the object of the most acute idiosyncrasies, the most heinous suspicions, of mistrust rooted even in early childhood” (203). Food tourism is subject to the same forces of staged inauthenticity as the rest of the tourism industry, and D’Eramo utilizes this aspect of inauthenticity and extends it to how we link together food and our conception of the Other in a pluralistic society, as he uses the common metaphor of the “melting pot” analogy to critique a liberal conception of multiculturalism.
In summation, D’Eramo critiques the commodification of the tourist experience and the cultures being visited, suggesting that the overwhelming focus on spectacle and consumer-driven expectations has led to a shallow, often alienating form of travel. He reflects on the implications of this trend for both tourists and the people whose homes and traditions are transformed into products for consumption, placing a strain on both physical infrastructure and the social fabric of tourist cities. He also addresses the economic forces driving this transformation, highlighting how tourism contributes to global inequalities and a subjective understanding of the Self and Otherness.
Commendations:
The World is a Selfie is a trenchant and engaging critique of tourism, and must be commended in several key regards. First, D’Eramo provides a quick and pithy summation of the development of the tourism industry since the days of the Grand Tour in the mid-19th century. D’Eramo traces the evolution of tourism, from its origins as an aristocratic pursuit to its current mass-consumer form, giving readers a deep sense of how tourism has transformed societies. D’Eramo also brilliantly links the development of technology and transportation with the increasing snobbishness toward tourists, as an activity that was once the reserve of wealthy aristocrats became increasingly available to the wider public.
I also enjoyed his essays which critique how tourism has molded and changed the landscapes of cities, as they work to accommodate and cater to the ever-fluctuating needs and tastes of visiting tourists. D’Eramo lambasts UNESCO as a destroyer of cities, as it attempts to preserve a particular vision of a place from the external pressures of urban development and tourism, but often results in bringing more tourists and development in the periphery of its World Heritage Sites. This is a perspective that I had not considered before, and his comparison between the cities of Lijiang and Las Vegas was instructive and intriguing, especially as we consider how different cultures relate physical structures to their relationships to the past.
I also deeply appreciated D’Eramo’s multidimensional critique of contemporary tourism, as he links it to larger issues like globalization, consumerism, and the commodification of experience. As such, his work examines not just the superficial aspects of tourism that are all too often easy fodder for derision, but also delves into its underlying impacts on local cultures and environments. As someone who spent most of my formative years in tourist towns, many of D’Eramo’s critiques deeply resonated with me. Since D’Eramo lives in Rome, which is also subject to some of the worst excesses and consequences of the tourism industry (such as the negative impact of Airbnb and the “tourist gaze”), his perspective is often formed by first-hand experience, which gives his account an air of acerbic humor and sharp criticism.
Additionally, while it could be overly-heady and meandering at times, I did also appreciate D’Eramo’s attempts to theorize the psychological aspects of tourism. Drawing on the concept of the "tourist gaze" (a term coined by sociologist John Urry), D’Eramo critically examines how tourists interact with the world around them, often reducing cultures, landscapes, and histories to simplistic, consumable experiences. He also dives headfirst into Hegelian thought and the history of science fiction as he attempts to grapple with the dialectic relationship between alienation and authenticity, and why they are so central to the tourist experience. This analysis is particularly relevant in the age of Instagram and selfies, where authenticity is often sacrificed for the perfect image.
Finally, I also appreciated D’Eramo’s global perspective, which is essential when discussing the nature of tourism today. D’Eramo examines various regions and cities across the world, including Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, China, Las Vegas, New York City, Greece, Thailand, South Korea, and many more. This international perspective is crucial when discussing the globalized nature of the tourism industry today, and it broadens the scope of his analysis, making it more inclusive of different cultures and environments affected by tourism. It also highlights the multidimensional aspects of tourism, as D’Eramo also examines the various kinds of tourism, such as medical tourism, gastronomical tourism, business tourism, sports tourism, religious tourism, pop tourism, sex tourism, and more. These inclusions add yet another layer of complexity and nuance to D’Eramo’s account, which
Critique:
On the other hand, the book suffers from several glaring weaknesses. First of all, while there are plenty of great insights throughout this work, it is one of the most meandering books that I’ve come across in recent memory. D’Eramo starts a chapter with a seemingly clear thesis and argument, but then he gradually goes off into tangential thoughts, following rabbit holes that stray far from his main point. Rather than a tightly argued argument, the book reads more like stream-of-consciousness ramblings that often forget their own way.
Furthermore, D’Eramo seems to not know which direction to take when it comes to describing tourism. As a whole, it reads more like three separate extended essays: one on the history of tourism, one on the modern effects of tourism (including two case studies), and then one that is a hodgepodge of various philosophical musings on space aliens, Hegelianism, and multiculturalism as they relate to the theme of alienation. While the first two tend to complement each other well, the more esoteric sections come out of left field. While his thoughts in this section are vaguely interesting, they do not add much to the overall argument of the book. The book would have benefited from cutting these extra chapters, and perhaps incorporating them into another, more continental philosophy-centered work.
Part of the reason why The World in a Selfie seems unfocused is due to the shifting nature of D’Eramo’s analysis as he was writing the book. He confesses in the Afterword that he decided to change what he wanted to write about part-way through the book, as he began writing more about the “tourist city” rather than the tourism industry. He admits that, because of this shift, some of his thoughts are probably not fully formed and might be at odds with itself, which makes me wonder why it wasn’t refined more by the editors.
Another weakness of the book is D’Eramo’s insistence that tourism is the central driving force that is guiding our postmodern age. In the opening pages, D’Eramo declares, “Tourism is even more important than sport or advertising- so much so that we could quite plausibly term the current era ‘the Age of Tourism’ in the same way that we used to speak of the Age of Steel or the Age of Imperialism” (2).
On the one hand, D’Eramo is correct to point out the vast infrastructure and networks that must be in place for tourism to occur (eg. airports, train stations, hotels, restaurants, telecommunications, IT networks, shipping, road construction, cement and steelwork manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, etc.). This became strikingly apparent during the COVID-19 shutdowns, which dramatically disrupted the global economy and slowed tourism down to a screeching halt.
However, asserting that we are presently in the “Age of Tourism” appears somewhat exaggerated, as D’Eramo frequently draws incongruous comparisons. Concerning the previous quotation, sports and advertising are related yet distinct fields that may intersect with tourism, and prioritizing one over the other seems to be merely a rhetorical and arbitrary evaluation. D’Eramo’s constant insistence on the centrality of tourism seems a bit overstated.
As the old saying goes, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” As such, D’Eramo tends to stretch the limits of his all-encompassing thesis on tourism, especially its political implications. For example, using the dissolution of the Soviet Union as an example, he cites in the opening chapter that “‘the demand for tourism triggered the collapse of a great empire” (5-6). This is referring to when the German government relaxed their travel visa requirements after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, allowing East and West Germans to readily travel between the two sides.
D’Eramo credits the demand of East Germans to witness the capitalist West as speeding the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is an incredibly simplistic and one-dimensional perspective, as many who traveled across the border did not do so to simply visit as tourists but to reunite with their families and find employment. D’Eramo completely ignores the economic motivations that drove the fall of the GDR, attributing it rather to a desire for tourism. Essentially, this claim mistakes what is a materialist cause for an idealist one while also strangely conflating migration with tourism.
This is just one example of how D’Eramo tends to speak in generalizations, often oversimplifying and obfuscating the motivations and experiences of tourists. While D’Eramo critiques tourism’s commodification, it’s important to recognize that not all tourism has the same negative impact, and there can be nuance in how tourism interacts with different locales and cultures. While D’Eramo begins the book by questioning the snobbish tendency to look down upon tourists, he spends the rest of the book constantly deriding tourists and lamenting their impact on local cultures. As such, some readers might find certain arguments too sweeping or not sufficiently nuanced.
Furthermore, there are a few aspects of this work that are eyebrow-raising. First, despite the book’s title, there is no examination of the role of social media in shaping the contemporary tourism industry, as geotags and the recommendations of influencers can turn a hole-in-the-wall gem into a tourist trap overnight. This seems like a glaring omission, especially with the current inundation of social media travel blogs/accounts/influencers.
Additionally, as someone who grew up in a coastal town, I found a particular claim of D’Eramo’s to be quite strange. In one of his more esoteric and tangential chapters (titled “A Brief Intrusion by an Earthologist Friend”), D’Eramo recounts a (hopefully imagined) conversation with “an extraterrestrial friend of mine.” While I hope that this is just a device that provides D’Eramo with an opportunity to zoom out and view the peculiar actions of humans as if we were studied by alien anthropologists (similar to Nathan W Wyle’s Strange Planet comic strips), he brings up a puzzling assertion. He asserts that “humanh]uman civilizations have traditionally had a sceptical relationship toward saltwater,” citing as evidence that cities along the coast are set back and on hills, while the towns by the sea are newer and entirely tied to the tourism industry, built exclusively for seaside holidays and to accommodate tourists. (67-68).
This is, to put it bluntly, absurd. The development of urban coastal communities was not a result of tourism, but simply because they were ports of entry vital for maritime trading. To think of two examples close to my heart, both Wilmington, NC and Charleston, SC are urban coastal communities that were founded and developed not because of tourism, but because they were vitally important to the economic development of the American colonies and profited from facilitating the trading of spices, livestock, tobacco, and slaves. Again, D’Eramo once again ignores the simple economic explanation for the coastal orientation of historical cities in favor of his pet theory of tourism influencing everything we see.
Finally, one last criticism is that D’Eramo tends to focus more on critique than on offering concrete solutions to the problems he identifies. While D’Eramo paints a vivid picture of the downsides of mass tourism, he doesn’t provide clear, actionable alternatives or ways to mitigate its negative effects. Tourism, for D’Eramo, is ultimately a self-destructive perpetual process of alienation, fueled by the endless chasing after an unattainable and imagined sense of authenticity. This process saps the energy and vibrancy of cityscapes and is an escapable fact of (post)modernity. This overly pessimistic and dour disposition could feel frustrating or one-dimensional for most readers.
Conclusion:
Overall, The World in a Selfie is an insightful, if meandering, critique of contemporary tourism, offering a rich cultural analysis of how the tourism industry has evolved and its broader implications. While about a third of the book could easily be cut and D’Eramo often overstates and stretches his analysis past its reasonable limit, this work is still a thought-provoking examination of the modern tourist industry. By questioning whether tourism can ever provide authentic experiences in an era defined by mass consumption and superficial engagement, D’Eramo calls us to reflect on the ethics of tourism and rethink how we engage with the world around us when we travel. For anyone interested in understanding the social and cultural impact of tourism, d’Eramo’s work provides valuable and thought-provoking commentary. As tourism is showingno signs of slowing in a post-Covid world, D’Eramo’s incisive intervention remains more relevant than ever.